Giving Kids a Life of Choice
It doesn’t matter how you are involved in Hands; we want you to benefit and feel enriched by the experience. When we consider the community of Hands, there are a couple of obvious groups; those that support the work that we do and those in Thailand that are the direct beneficiaries of that support.
For those in Thailand, the kids and communities whose lives are positively changed each and every day, we measure the impact of our work not on the number of kids, not on the number of homes and not on the amount of money that we raise. They can certainly be tangible measures, but the one metric that we value most is the choices the kids have when they choose its time to leave their home.
We value most of all creating a life of choice for our kids, rather than one of chance. We do this by investing long term in their futures because we know that if you want long term results, you need to make long term commitments.
The Hands community that works so hard to generate the funds necessary to enable us to create a life of choice , often benefit more than they could ever imagine, by supporting someone else. This often comes in the form of their participation in one of our incredibly popular shared experiences.
At Hands, we work on the principle that supporting charity, as an individual or as a business should be good for you and not just those receiving the money. Personally benefiting from your involvement in charity is not just a good thing, it’s so often necessary for that long term involvement.
The money that is raised and entrusted with Hands to bring about change is used to provide the lifesaving necessities for the kids in our homes, and importantly, it supports many families in an outreach program keeping kids out of our homes. We know the best place for kids when all things are equal is in a family. When that doesn’t exist, we provide a home for those kids, which really is just one big family. The kids who live with us might do so for a short or long time, and they are with us usually due to one of three situations exist:
- They have no known family to care for them;
- They may have a parent, grandparent or other family member who is known to them, however, for a variety of reasons are unable to care for them; and
- The kids may have been living with a parent or family member however, for their safety, they have been removed from that situation by the police or government officials and placed into our care.
